OT: 1976 Patriots - The Birth of a Contender

[maust]

Billy Sullivan, and family, never did anything constructive for the team that cost any money, at all. The team was their personal piggy bank, and instead of paying their great players, they filled their piggy bank, only to lose it all to Michael Jackson. If Billy wasn't such a scoundrel, I believe the Pats would have been among the top teams in the league.

GM Bucko Kilroy certainly knew his ****, too bad his boss was full of it.

 

[40yrpatsfan]

They were clearly the best team in football that year, so talented everywhere.

 

[Bill Lee]

You have to remember (or if you didn't live throught it, consider) the circumstances.

The Patriots were a distant fourth in the New England pro sports scene. From 1966 (when the team barely missed out in playing for the first super bowl) through 1975, with a couple of minor exceptions they were unwatchable. Plunkett's first season brought excitement, as did a 5-0 start in '74 - but the team hadn't been in the playoffs in over ten years.

The 1976 season created a huge buzz in the area. The amount of change in attitude about the team was incredible. Yes, those Fairbanks-era teams never won a super bowl. But the increase in amount of positive attention the team was generating was amazing. You can't just write the '76 team off because they didn't win it all. The collective attitude about the Pats was a remarkable change.

Yes, the Patriots of 2001 and beyond did win it all, and had an historic run of excellence. But those Patriots had just been to the super bowl five years earlier. The fan base and interest was already there. The Patriots of 1976 did not have that foundation to build upon. Despite the Sullivans, they rose from nothing, defying odds to win fans of the Sox, Celtics and Bruins who were already used to winning with great stars, playing in the city in famous stadiums/arenas.

It cannot be overstated what a huge leap it was for the Fairbanks-era Patriots. I consider myself very fortunate to have lived through it.

I definitely see your point of view.

The way I saw it being a teenage sports fan in 1976 who favored the Boston teams despite being in the NY media market in CT was that the Patriots of this era went from not moving the needle at all to moving it a little bit. With players like Plunkett and coaches like Fairbanks you at least had a few reasons to want to become a Patriots fan.

OTOH, the vibe I got from people I knew who went to Schaefer Stadium was not good. Ankle deep mud in the parking lots, cold aluminum seats, fans drunk out of their minds on cheap Schaefer beer, vomit and fist fights everywhere. Billy Sullivan wasn't going to pay for things like paved parking lots and large numbers of trained security guards. He was there to make a buck off of ticket and beer sales.

Say what you want about Krafty Bob, but we should all remember that he literally is the reason the team didn't leave for St Louis. He built a much better facility than Schaefer Stadium and cared more about fan experience than the Sullivans ever did.

It's one reason I laugh when people call him out for being cheap. If he was cheap he would have sold out to the Orthweins and pocketed tens of millions of dollars. Instead he invested $172M, a lot more than anyone else ever had in buying a NFL team, to keep it here. Then a few years later he built a new stadium, largely out of funds he raised.

Of course he knew he could probably end up making money if he kept investing in the product, but I doubt he was thinking some day this team will be worth six billion dollars. It's a story that should make everyone happy, yet it seems some have some pretty ugly reasons to not like how it all went down.

 

[p8ryts]

Billy Sullivan, and family, never did anything constructive for the team that cost any money, at all. The team was their personal piggy bank, and instead of paying their great players, they filled their piggy bank, only to lose it all to Michael Jackson. If Billy wasn't such a scoundrel, I believe the Pats would have been among the top teams in the league.

They were just bad businessmen, working off a shoestring.

 

[maust]

They were just bad businessmen, working off a shoestring.

Billy Sullivan wasn't just a bad businessman he was a con man who slipped it to everyone he did business with. He may have seemed like a 'hail fellow well met' sorta old-timey Boston Irish but the reality was if he was clapping someone on the back with his left hand he was using his right to lift their wallet. He was so underhanded he tried to cancel Darryl Stingley's health insurance after the fact, that goes well beyond being a 'bad businessman' straight to scumbag territory. You could certainly label his son Chuck 'bad' at business, laughably bad, but Billy was a shyster of the first order.

 

[jimnance]

From '79 on, that 1978 team was a thing of football beauty to behold at work until the Sullivan/Fairbanks fiasco kneecapped it.

Yup. Somebody should've sent Inigo Montoya to have a a few words with Sullivan. 3 words in particular

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

So many bad things happened in the ensuing years.

For one they were 2-14 five years later.

Which was the single losing season for the Patriots in a 13 year stretch.

What matters is eternal baseless denigration of the team along with ignorance of its on field accomplishments since the merger.

That is the foundation for the two major scandals based upon nothing this century.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

I was like 7 or 8z Didn’t even know they were playing. Somehow I still get mad about it though.

Through lore and studying I learned that it was the best rushing team of all time. A record that stood for over 40+ years. Imagine the Ravens trying to run in 76 when all football teams main objective was to stop the run first and foremost?

I’ve also seen the footage of the call many times and didn’t even realize there was roughing the passer back then. All the football I watched in the 80’s and 90s was the QB picking himself off the ground, completion or not. They didn’t
Even install the 3 step rule into effect until 6 qbs went down on one Sunday back in 86 or 87. So watching the play se were robbed of I can Imagine it was so tic tak and absurd given the times.

Funny thing is Patriots destroyed the Raiders in the regular season that same season. Oakland needed all the help they could get. It really was one of the worst calls ever and I have no sympathy for any Raider fan regarding the tuck rule if they are oblivious to the Hamilton call.

Many of those QB's were unable to pick themselves up. Stabler flopped in desperation, Dreith fell for it, and his teammates helped him up.

But it wasn't only one call. The whole game, and then the fourth quarter down the stretch. It was a debacle, but many felt the Patriots deserved it due to Sullivan.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

I drove down to Bryant college in the summer before the season where the few fans could sit under a tree at break time and shoot the breeze with players. I got a football autographed by Grogan, Stingley, Hannah, Haynes, Fox, etc. It was the season that gave me hope a championship team was possible. I’ll never forget ‘76.

Did you see/meet Gail Granik(later Gayle Gardner) from Channel 4?

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Birth of a contender? Really? They missed the playoffs the following year, made the playoffs in 78 and summarily got waxed at home. They did not make another playoff appearance until 1985 (unless you count the strike "tournament" in 1982 when more than half the conference made the playoffs). The 1976 team was more like a blip on the radar of an otherwise hapless, joke of a franchise. So you're telling us the 1976 team birthed a "contender", a contender that made the playoffs a total of THREE times in SEVENTEEN seasons after this supposed contender birthing year...yikes

In the 60's, 70's and 80's, the Patriots were better and won more games than 2/3 of the rest of the teams in football.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

"In many ways, that season was the spiritual birth of the Patriots as a modern football contender — one that set the stage for future greatness decades later."


Definitely a nice trip down memory lane, but the conclusion is simply not true.

Yes it is, and more than just spiritual.

Belichick acknowledged that Fairbanks' organization and strategies were utilized in his system.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

GM Bucko Kilroy certainly knew his ****, too bad his boss was full of it.

Bucko definitely should be in the Patriots' Hall of Fame.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

I definitely see your point of view.

The way I saw it being a teenage sports fan in 1976 who favored the Boston teams despite being in the NY media market in CT was that the Patriots of this era went from not moving the needle at all to moving it a little bit. With players like Plunkett and coaches like Fairbanks you at least had a few reasons to want to become a Patriots fan.

OTOH, the vibe I got from people I knew who went to Schaefer Stadium was not good. Ankle deep mud in the parking lots, cold aluminum seats, fans drunk out of their minds on cheap Schaefer beer, vomit and fist fights everywhere. Billy Sullivan wasn't going to pay for things like paved parking lots and large numbers of trained security guards. He was there to make a buck off of ticket and beer sales.

Say what you want about Krafty Bob, but we should all remember that he literally is the reason the team didn't leave for St Louis. He built a much better facility than Schaefer Stadium and cared more about fan experience than the Sullivans ever did.

It's one reason I laugh when people call him out for being cheap. If he was cheap he would have sold out to the Orthweins and pocketed tens of millions of dollars. Instead he invested $172M, a lot more than anyone else ever had in buying a NFL team, to keep it here. Then a few years later he built a new stadium, largely out of funds he raised.

Of course he knew he could probably end up making money if he kept investing in the product, but I doubt he was thinking some day this team will be worth six billion dollars. It's a story that should make everyone happy, yet it seems some have some pretty ugly reasons to not like how it all went down.

You're right about Bob, and he's always been motivated by growing up a fan during the Sullivan ownership.

But that needle moved WAY more than a little bit, and only Dreith prevented everyone from seeing it.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Billy Sullivan wasn't just a bad businessman he was a con man who slipped it to everyone he did business with. He may have seemed like a 'hail fellow well met' sorta old-timey Boston Irish but the reality was if he was clapping someone on the back with his left hand he was using his right to lift their wallet. He was so underhanded he tried to cancel Darryl Stingley's health insurance after the fact, that goes well beyond being a 'bad businessman' straight to scumbag territory. You could certainly label his son Chuck 'bad' at business, laughably bad, but Billy was a shyster of the first order.

He put his toxic son Chuck in charge, and backed him up.

But he hired Chuck Fairbanks and kept our logo and thus our identity, and his ineptitude serves to highlight his players' courage, heroism and outstanding play.

The wins remain in the record books, for anyone who chooses to look them up. Most of them are directly attributable to Steve Grogan.

 

[Family]

Yes it is, and more than just spiritual.

Belichick acknowledged that Fairbanks' organization and strategies were utilized in his system.

It's common knowledge that many teams used the Erhardt/Perkins system which the Patriots also did. If that's it, meh, but OK.

What exactly was the spiritual birth of the Patriots as a modern contender?

They became a nightmare of disorganization, greed, failure, leadership voids until Parcels. They even almost moved to Hartford.

 

[Mack Herron]

Did you see/meet Gail Granik(later Gayle Gardner) from Channel 4?

I remember the name but I don’t remember seeing any media. As I recall, they might do one quick story and might or might not send a reporter down there. Patriots were a very different deal in those days.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

It's common knowledge that many teams used the Erhardt/Perkins system which the Patriots also did. If that's it, meh, but OK.

What exactly was the spiritual birth of the Patriots as a modern contender?

They became a nightmare of disorganization, greed, failure, leadership voids until Parcels. They even almost moved to Hartford.

Ownership, yeah.

Hartford was later, when Bob called local government's bluff. Sullivan and Kiam tried moving to Jacksonville at the end.

But on the field the Patriots were winning lots of games, and opponents and the media would never accept it. Sound familiar?

Fairbanks was brilliant.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

I remember the name but I don’t remember seeing any media. As I recall, they might do one quick story and might or might not send a reporter down there. Patriots were a very different deal in those days.

Gail was there, I think she was just out of BU.

She was already the executive producer for sports.

Interviewed all of them and she was really good.

Len Berman hosted the weekly pregame show, Patriots '76.

Their 3-11 record the previous season was really deceptive, and not indicative of how competitive the games were, or their talent. Grogan and Francis showed a lot as rookies.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

It's common knowledge that many teams used the Erhardt/Perkins system which the Patriots also did. If that's it, meh, but OK.

What exactly was the spiritual birth of the Patriots as a modern contender?

They became a nightmare of disorganization, greed, failure, leadership voids until Parcels. They even almost moved to Hartford.

I think the spiritual birth was the Vikings game at the Met when Bob Windsor made the winning TD.

They'd gone 5-0 and were in Sports Illustrated, but they weren't considered for real until then. The Vikings went to that Super Bowl, and again two years later when we would have beaten them again in Pasadena.

 

[Family]

I think the spiritual birth was the Vikings game at the Met when Bob Windsor made the winning TD.

They'd gone 5-0 and were in Sports Illustrated, but they weren't considered for real until then. The Vikings went to that Super Bowl, and again two years later when we would have beaten them again in Pasadena.

I remember the play well and it was great!

But how did that play have any impact on subsequent years?

It's nothing like Brady's drive to win the first Super Bowl or the snow game.

The most spiritual event from that team was the roughing the passer call on Sugar Bear.

It was like Ground Hog Day, only the shadow meant fifteen more years of a directionless franchise.